Asset Management in Hospitals

Asset management in hospitals is a systematic approach to governance over medical assets that a department or group is responsible for, throughout the entire medical asset lifecycle from procurement and operations to disposal.

What is Asset Management in Hospitals?

Asset management in hospitals is a systematic approach to governance over medical assets that a department or group is responsible for, throughout the entire medical asset lifecycle. The governance of medical asset management is a systematic process starting from the procurement of the medical asset, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of the asset, in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Asset management in hospitals includes everything from ventilation, air-conditioning, refrigerators, coolers; to CT-scanners, defibrillators, oxygen concentrators, beds, and wheelchairs. There are many other possible assets to mention. It is not uncommon for medium and large hospitals to have more than 3000 distinct types of assets within their facility.

Why is Asset Management in Hospitals Important?

Asset management in hospitals enables the healthcare organisation to streamline medical asset inventory, maintenance, and asset tracking. It plays a significant role in managing preventive maintenance of all assets, reducing the potential risk of the asset breaking down. This leads to easy management of preventive maintenance and reducing risk.

The ability to manage more than 3000 distinct types of assets within a hospital facility is a major challenge. A hospital often has multiple units of the same asset, such as having multiple defibrillators of the same type through the entire facility. As a result, the total number of assets a medium to large sized hospital will have at least 5-10 times the number of distinct types of asset. Keeping track of all these assets and the maintenance needed requires well-functioning governance and processes.

Compared to other industries, in the healthcare segment it is crucial that all assets are maintained in an excellent condition to ensure patient safety. Especially, high risk and high device class medical assets, such as defibrillators and ventilators, must follow strict maintenance procedures to ensure sustained patient safety.

Healthcare organisations with exceptional governance over asset management in their hospital facilities can ensure that they meet regulatory compliance. Depending on your location and governing body, there are various compliance that needs to be adhered to. Not adhering to local, national, or international regulatory compliance will not only affect your organisation’s operations and credibility but could also have devastating effects on patient safety. Here are a few noteworthy mentions to consider:

7 Key Benefits of Asset Management in Hospitals

Beyond ensuring compliance to regulations and internal requirements, management of medical assets has great benefits for the healthcare organisations. These are the general benefits of asset management in hospitals that are mentioned below. Having a systematic governance and process with an asset management solution can provide these and many other benefits.

1. Streamline Asset Management

Enables hospital staff, such as clinical engineers and maintenance teams, to streamline medical equipment management from oxygen-concentrators to CT scanners.

2. Comprehensive Asset Registry

A comprehensive asset registry that enables hospitals to have a detailed cover all asset related information such as model, codes, manufacturer, contracts, warranty, finance, and more. Hospitals will also be able to easily assign requests, work orders, preventive maintenance to available resources, and more.

3. Ease Preventive Maintenance

Most medical assets require planned preventative maintenance. Asset management will ease scheduling of preventive maintenance for all medical assets. Enabling clinical and administrative staff to easily log and track maintenance requests on medical devices through help desk functionality.

4. Sustain Patient Safety

Importantly, healthcare organisations will sustain patient safety by ensuring that medical assets are properly maintained according to manufacturer recommendations. Simultaneously ensuring that critical assets are available when and where they are needed the most.

5. Maximise Medical Asset Utilisation

Gathering information about medical assets can help extend the life cycle of the assets. Hospitals can gain insight into how much the medical asset is in use and how often each asset has a breakdown. This can help medical engineers to better understand the medical assets they manage.

The maximising medical asset utilisation benefit, in short, means extending the usability and availability, while also improving reliability.

6. Ease Localisation of Medical Devices

At times, healthcare organisations also write down the location of their assets as it helps staff locate equipment faster. As a result, they will spend less time tracking down the equipment. It can also have the additional benefit of clarifying what equipment has been rented or loaned, and to whom.

7. Improved Maintenance and Decreased Downtime

Enables hospitals to get more information for planning maintenance sessions. And therefore, prepare repairs and upgrades to be carried out in quieter periods or prepare for increasing resources to manage the tough periods.

Solutions for Asset Management in Hospitals

Hospital asset management solutions may vary in some degrees and the best solution to fit a specific organisation may differ depending on their requirements. Asset management solutions made for the healthcare segment have functionality used to comply with regulatory compliance and ease management of medical assets.

There are several features of asset management software that are made to fit medical and organizational needs. All organizations and their needs are unique; therefore, we can only discuss from a general point of view. Here are a few areas that healthcare organizations and hospitals should consider:

Asset Management and Registry. The most fundamental feature of healthcare asset management software is to contain all the medical asset related information: manufacturer, model, class, type, codes, associated costs, location, downtime, documentation and more that suit the organization’s needs.
Work Order. Work orders are, simply put, data related to medical devices: description, priority, type of work requirement, supply requirement and assigned personnel.
Preventive Maintenance. Most medical assets have recurring schedules to ensure that the device is in a healthy state.
Customer Portal. Simplify the management of customer-related activities in healthcare organizations.
Helpdesk. Centralized help desk and provide advanced management of service requests.
Contract. Managing hundreds of contracts can be a challenge for many healthcare organizations, this will ease that workload.
Competence. Track and document education, certifications, training, and roles for all personnel.
Finance. Enables support for accounting activities such as recurring invoicing.
Patient and Logistics. Patient-focused logistical management of equipment and consumables.
Integration Services. Can be integrated into a wide range of third-party software solutions. Some providers even have standardized integrations, ensuring data security and reducing costs.
BI-Analytics. Make it possible for healthcare organizations to make a data-driven decision base.

Many healthcare organizations require the ability to access their medical assets across multiple facilities and departments. Asset management software with cloud-based deployment can make it seamless for healthcare organizations to track assets and maintenance requests across large distances. Furthermore, an asset management solution will provide clinical engineers with improved asset visibility compared to an Excel spreadsheet.

The Medusa asset management software solution is managing more than 15 million assets daily in over 400 hospitals. It has 23 years of experience in the healthcare segment, and it is continuously being to meet current and future needs within the healthcare industry.

Summary

Asset management in hospitals is a systematic approach to governance over medical assets that a department or group is responsible for, throughout the entire medical asset lifecycle from procurement and operations to disposal. Asset management in hospitals plays a significant role in managing preventive maintenance of all assets, reducing the potential risk of the asset breaking down and has several additional benefits.

If you found this article relevant for your healthcare organisation and seem to need an asset management solution. We are happy to discuss your needs to see if we might be a solution for your needs or at least guide you forward. It is entirely free, and we can provide a free personalised demo to fit your healthcare environment.